I am not a wild woman. I have maintained many streaks of my ancestors: independent American, guilty Puritan, prudish Victorian but adventurous pioneer seems to have died in me from misuse, I suppose. Most of my traveling memories are on the beaten path. I follow the multitudes to museums, malls, statues, and visitor centers with explanatory movies and guided tours.
I have never slept in a forest or walked in the deep of night with stars and moonlight whispering their secrets. But I do like to sit in the quiet and think alone, and I am beginning to think I’ve been missing out on the woods all these years. I have done my thinking in rooms with views, in a beach chair on the shore and in the cocoon of my bed. I’ve never really known the quiet of the woods and the dreamscapes of the tree canopy as a place of solace and reflection.
As a family that does not pursue wildness, our stops in the National Parks have been communal visits with other travelers instead of quiet solitude with nature. We mostly encounter a contained wild: tamed and organized with shuttle buses from parking lots to paths. A wilderness with the comfort of lodges, gift shops, and restaurants nearby and lines of people trekking to waterfalls with snippets of a hundred conversations floating by on the paths.
But when we arrived at The Redwoods in Northern California suddenly we seemed to be the only people left on Earth in a forest of giants.
We were like tourists in New York City looking up at skyscrapers, our gaze signaling that we were not from around here. We were like summer visitors in my own city, Va. Beach, who look up when the jets fly by and who flinch and cover their ears as the engines roar through the clouds as the locals register the jet scream as little more than birdsong.
In the Redwoods, we know, we do not belong to this forest. There is no one around to see us gaping and to see our hesitant footfalls as we listen for strange sounds.
The first thing I notice in the forest of the Redwoods is the stifled sunshine creating a haven of shade. Shafts of sunlight break through, but the overall effect is perpetual dusk, an evening feeling all day long. The second thing I notice are the wild ferns and the palette of Pacific greens and deep browns. Gone are the blues of the ocean and the khaki sand of my hometown.
Sunlight, leaf and bark and my eyes are skyward, and I’m thinking of all the trees I’ve known in my life. Crepe myrtles in my grandmother’s post WWII planned suburban neighborhood with sleek skin and demure branches and frilly blooms that still make me think of old people. A weeping willow at the botanical gardens with a leafy curtain to hide inside of while picnicking with Chris when we were sixteen. Pine trees in the backyard of our first house when the kids were young that swayed and stood true through Hurricane Isabel. The ombu tree of Argentina whose tangled roots we thought both beautiful and ugly, a mess of contradiction, similar to the year abroad we spent there.
But these California trees are something else entirely. These are trees of a kingdom. These are Tolkien Ents. These are trees of the poets and storytellers, trees of the fairies and of make believe; trees to believe in as superior to any god. Our only urge is to circle them like a gathering. Something about the massive, wizened trunks opens my arms wide, and I can do nothing but press my cheek against the bark and close my eyes in a woody embrace. We look like Smurfs or five of the seven dwarfs whistling in the woodlands. Snow White seems more suited here than inside Disneyland. This is a forest of Grimm. We quickly realize it is also the forest of the Ewoks. The landscape becomes familiar but still unknown, a shaded mystery of a place so unlike my natural habitat of sun and surf.
When I was young, my mother would take my sister and I shopping on Saturdays. One of her favorite stores was called The Welcome Latch which specialized in country crafts and décor. Every time we walked from the bright sunshine of the parking lot past the sand colored stucco of the strip mall into the shade of The Welcome Latch, I felt I had entered another land. The tinkling bell announced our arrival, and then we would wander down paths of wreaths and baskets and cinnamon. This was Laura Ingalls Wilder territory and the place fulfilled my prairie world of make believe. My hands trailed along soft quilts and linen doll dresses and satin ribbons.
My mother had shadow boxes on the walls of our apartment, and she would buy tiny figures and objects to put on display in the small compartments of the boxes: thimbles, buttons, miniature dogs and dried flowers. These were small treasures she would buy at The Welcome Latch and always old fashioned candy sticks for me and my sister. I loved cherry and lemon best. When we left the store, it was like crossing back over a border of time and place.
The Redwoods felt this way to me. Robert Macfarlane, writer and naturalist, calls them border crossings when you move from a known landscape into another world where we think and feel differently. These crossings can happen in familiar places and strange new ones, anywhere that shifts something inside us, breaks things loose, shuffles the deck of memory and knowledge and belief.
Landscapes can inspire wonder, a beautiful ignition of questions firing off in the mind. Curious discontent becomes a spark in the frontiers we seek across countries and continents and across our own streets and neighborhoods.
When I was young, the first landscapes away from the familiars of home were mostly stores. The mall was like a country of sights and sounds and smells that I wanted to explore all day, an exotic trek through blouses and jewels. I liked to touch the fabrics and wonder how possessions could transform a life. I was a budding materialist moving about the paths of cotton, suede, leather and linen. In childhood, I took my adventures where I could get them. The local mall might as well have been a Paris flea market or a Moroccan bazaar for all I knew of the world. I still love a great shopping district and never hesitate to add them to the sightseeing list on any trip. After all, I am not a wild woman of the woods and forests and trees, never at ease for long stretches nor capable on green paths. But those border crossings into unknown lands Macfarlane writes of can change belief and alter the thought patterns of a lifetime.
Crossing from the seaside village of Eureka, California with Victorian homes and familiar salt spray and charming restaurants into The Redwoods with earth everywhere released the mystic in me. Maybe I could lie down on gathered pine and splays of fern and listen to the trees. Maybe I could be a woods walker and release the stories and songs of those who came before me as I walked the paths finding my way to things not made by any man. No architects, no bricklayers, no salesmen, no bankers just the work of wind and rock and soil and water.
We have the luxury of this kind of wonder as we wander. Day trips into the national parks satisfy our quest for nature to a certain extent but should we be sleeping in the wild? We haven’t seen much of the night sky out west or heard the animals conferring, or woke up with the morning dew on our skin. We haven’t lost hours to the quiet of an old world, pondering the mysteries of life while sitting beside ancient trees.
We have gone into nearly every gift shop or country store in the parks we visit. I make it a habit to buy postcards at each stop to help me remember these special moments. In many of the gift shops, I often pick up a walking stick and hold it like it’s a necklace I want to try on. I feel its heft and its grip like a partner ready to show me the way. I wonder if it suits me, this wild accessory; but, I haven’t bought one, yet.